Beginning Statements

So in the first post I began pretty vague.  I was purposely trying to not begin talking by labeling myself.  Upon thinking, I know I have to provide some sort of backdrop to help myself and others see why I feel so confused about things and see how I hope writing leads to a better understanding of the inner workings of spirituality.

There's no way to just mesh things seamlessly for me.  So I will first make some statements.

1.  I know there is a God.

2.  I don't believe in luck or coincidence.

3.  I believe I exist because God made it happen.

How in the world do I provide backup for these statements?  I can't really.  It's just something I know. That's where all the confusion of the world I live in steps in to provide doubt and fear.  To that end I add more history.

My first memories of God are in a Roman Catholic Church, and my childhood memories of church are beautiful in every way.  It is always this feeling I aspire to when I think of God and of the concept of church.  To me, calling the Priest Father was akin to having a parent teaching me what is good and admonish me when I behaved bad.  Our Priest cared about me as a person and as a child of God.  I can even remember going to confession and feeling good about sharing my sins.  I always looked upon confession as counseling of a sort, and Father____ always taught me something during and after having been to confession.  It was news to me that I was supposed to think Priests were my emissary to God.  I've always known I could talk to him.  

I believe in Jesus.  I grew up knowing how he died on the cross because God loved me so much.  I din't understand the differences of churches until I was older, but growing up Catholic in the South always felt like I was protecting the fundamental belief of believing in Christ.  I could never understand the statement:  born again.  I think I interpreted that early on as literal and could not wrap my head around the wide gap this thought made between me and other people.  To me, Christian was Christian.

What I mean is I could not understand the difference of faith and choice.  I still grapple with this idea.  I don't know when I thought hard on the words belief, faith and choice.  It kind of still has hold of me.  Belief =  God  Faith= Spirit Choice=Jesus.  Or Belief=God=Know.  Faith=Spirit=prayer.  Choice=Jesus=Reality.  I could go on with plugging in of words.  I thought they were all and the same. 

I was not brought up to pray to Mary, or to worship her.  I know the prayer, Hail Mary, but always interpreted this as a way to praise the woman who gave birth to Christ.  Then on the other hand, I have always viewed Mary as someone to aspire to be like, because God picked her.  Yeah, I always wanted to be that kind of mother, and I have never looked back at it because this is my childhood interpretation.

I'll stop here as its getting to be a long post, but don't start forming a label yet.  I'm just trying to set out what my heart says to talk upon.